Optimum prepaid Mastercard - down or out?

MikeWhite

Just had car rejected both contactless and chip and pin.
Android app is not logging in and live chat on website is unanswered.

Temporary issues or are they closing?

paragon909

MikeWhite wrote: »

Just had car rejected both contactless and chip and pin.
Android app is not logging in and live chat on website is unanswered.

Temporary issues or are they closing?

Why don't you phone them and ask and maybe they will give you an update, Likely their payment system is down or whoever they use to process the card payments.

alanq

paragon909 wrote: »

Why don't you phone them and ask and maybe they will give you an update,

According to the Ts&Cs, each phone call to customer services will result in £1 being deducted from the balance. This seems to me to be against the spirit, if not the rules, that ban premium rate phone numbers for contacting customer services of organisations.
http://www.myoptimumcard.co.uk/costs/

Not the best run organisation. It emailed me a month before my card was due to expire to say they would be issuing a new one shortly. When one didn't arrive by the expiry date I informed them and told them not to bother. Three weeks later a replacement card arrived that I never activated.

paragon909

alanq wrote: »

According to the Ts&Cs, each phone call to customer services will result in £1 being deducted from the balance. This seems to me to be against the spirit, if not the rules, that ban premium rate phone numbers for contacting customer services of organisations.
http://www.myoptimumcard.co.uk/costs/

Not the best run organisation. It emailed me a month before my card was due to expire to say they would be issuing a new one shortly. When one didn't arrive by the expiry date I informed them and told them not to bother. Three weeks later a replacement card arrived that I never activated.

As a member of the phonepayplus organisation, It is against the rules to use premium rate numbers for customer service and doing it this way is quite sly and horrible.

Why anyone would be with such a company is madness!

SnowTiger

PrePay Solutions appears to provide the tech behind Optimum and others.

Their online portals, accessed through https://sites.prepaytec.com/chopinweb/, were down earlier today. I couldn't access my Sainsbury's prepaid account.

MikeWhite

As above, no way I'm phoning them!
System came back online some time before 18:15

They do seem a bit amateur but the card was free and suits our purpose (when it's working).

Anthorn

Since the advent of the new Basic Bank Accounts (as opposed to the old Basic bank Accounts) pre-paid cards as a whole were challenged because in theory at least everyone could get a bank account. But against the odds pre-paid cards and the whole of the alternative finance sector persist with a few notable exceptions such as Wonga.

But some pre-paid cards with relatively high fees are challenged by other pre-paid cards with lower fees. I think those which are challenged will eventually find themselves in trouble and optimum is one of them. These days in order to charge fees at all pre-paid cards have to offer something more such as Direct Debits and Standing Orders (Cashplus) or even alternative bank current accounts (Change Account).

So to answer the question Optimum is down but not out but that applies to several pre-paid cards in the alternative finance sector. It was a replacement for the well regarded Orange pre-paid card and as such had customers who came over and probably stay if Optimum has build up reasonable customer relations. But there are better alternatives out there.

alanq

Anthorn wrote: »

It was a replacement for the well regarded Orange pre-paid card ...

Each person's experience will differ but the Orange card was certainly not well regarded by me. There were similar delays in issuing replacement cards and they managed to expire my Orange PAYG reward minutes because they were not spending the oldest first. I believe there was also a charge for phoning customer services. Wasn't the Orange card run by the same people who run Optimum?

Anthorn

alanq wrote: »

Wasn't the Orange card run by the same people who run Optimum?

Who do you think "runs it"?

According to the blurb it's part of the 360Money Network and PFS provide the tech and issues the card.
http://www.prepaid365.com/prepaid-reviews/optimum-prepaid-card-review/